TGIK Games: Who We Are and How We Got Here

My name is Chris Renshall and I am one half of TGIK games. I spotted a game in the game aisle(a large corporation of red concentric circles) and expressed some interest in giving it a go. My wife took the timing of my birthday as a reason to purchase the game for me. The game was a football game (american football) that required a lot of dice rolling and some basic math skills. I took the game over to my buddy Aidan’s house and we played one game. We both had the same feeling after finishing the game, it was terrible. We proceeded to talk about how we would change the game to make it more fun and realistic. Aidan had the bring idea to stop in the middle of our conversation and grab pen and paper to write down the changes we were talking about. While we did not have a name for our new hobby, TGIK Games had been born.

I will leave the specifics for Line of Scrimmage for another post, but to this day, we believe it is the best game we have designed. The problem is, we designed the game with too many custom dice and the cost to produce is beyond what is reasonable. The lessons of how to design a game and keep production cost reasonable was not something we were worried about in the early days. (Pfft, cost, who needs to worry about cost!)

Aidan and I had found a new hobby we both enjoyed and could work early(7am early) on Saturday mornings when our wives were sleeping. The hobby became something different when we tested our first game with our non-football fan friends and they really liked it. If we could make fans of non-sport gamers, we could make games for hobby gamers and casual gamers. At least that is the thought we have been running with so far.

18 months have passed since we sat down to play a terrible football game and now are are making and testing prototypes, testing fledgling ideas and having a lot of fun in the process. We have expanded our ideas to include educational games (education being a passion for both of us) and have even been able to test a couple ideas in live classrooms. There is no reward greater than watching a student get into a game and you know that because of your efforts, that student is learning or strengthening their math skills.

There is a lot more to come from TGIK Games and we look forward to getting to know you all. The ride so far has been a blast and the community has been even better. I hope you join us on our journey as we turn our “out of nowhere” hobby into a thing that is more than a hobby, whatever that thing becomes…..